chestral poem of Pelleas et Melisande I have
yet to enjoy or execrate; there seems to be no middle term for
Schoenberg's amazing art. If I say I hate or like it that is only a
personal expression, not a criticism standing foursquare. I fear I
subscribe to the truth of Mr. Saintsbury's epigram.

It may be considered singular that the most original "new" music hails
from Austria, not Germany. No doubt that Strauss is the protagonist of
the romantics, dating from Liszt and Wagner; and that Max Reger is
the protagonist of the modern classicists, counting Brahms as their
fount (did you ever read what Wagner, almost a septuagenarian, wrote
of Brahms: "Der juedische Czardas-Aufspieler"?). But they are no longer
proclaimed by those ultramoderns who dare to call Strauss an
intermediate type. So rapidly doth music speed down the grooves of
time. From Vienna comes Schoenberg; in Vienna lives and composes the
youthful Erich Korngold, whose earlier music seems to well as if from
some mountain spring, although with all its spontaneity it has no
affinity with Mozart. It is distinctively "modern," employing the
resources of the "new" harmonic displacements and the multicoloured
modern orchestral apparatus. Korngold is so receptive that he reveals
just now the joint influences of Strauss and Schoenberg. Yet I think
the path lies straight before this young genius, a straight and
shining path.

The little Erich Korngold--in reality a plump, good-looking
boy--presents few problems for the critic. I know his piano music,
replete with youthful charm, and I heard his overture produced by the
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (the fifth concert of the season) under
the leadership of Arthur Nikisch. Whether or not the youth is helped
by his teacher, as some say, there can be no doubt as to his
precocious talent. His facility in composition is Mozartian. Nothing
laboured, all as spontaneous as Schoenberg is calculating. He scores
conventionally, that is, latter-day commonplaces are the rule in his
disposition and treatment of the instrumental army. Like Mozart, he is
melodious, easy to follow, and, like Mozart, he begins by building on
his immediate predecessor, in his case Strauss. Debussy is not absent,
nor is Fritz Delius.

I heard not a little of Der Rosenkavalier. But who would suspect a lad
of such a formal sense--even if it is only imitative--of such clear
development, such climaxes, and such a capital coda! The chief test of
the music--w